“It’s the talisman of Mersilde,” Circulos said proudly. “I smuggled it in here out of sight. “Take a look. Go on.”

Reynevan held out a hand but quickly withdrew it. Faint traces of a dried-on, dark substance on the talisman betrayed its hiding place.

“I’m going to try tonight,” the old man said, unmoved by his reaction. “Wish me fortune, young novice. Who knows, perhaps one day…”

“I still have…” Reynevan cleared his throat, “a request. I’m looking for answers… regarding a certain… incident…”

“Go on.”

He expounded the matter quickly but thoroughly. Circulos listened quietly and raptly, then began asking questions.

“What day was it? The precise date?”

“The last day of August. A Friday. An hour before Vespers.”

“Hmm… The Sun in the sign of the Virgin, which is Venus…

The ruling dualistic phenomenon, in Chaldean: Shamas, in Hebrew: Hamaliel. The Moon, it looks from my calculations, was full… unfortunately… The hour of the Sun… could have been better, could have been worse… Just a moment.”

He brushed away the straw, rubbed the floor with his hand, scribbled some graphs and digits on it, added, multiplied and divided, mumbling something about ascendants, descendants, angles, epicycles, deferents and quincunxes. Finally, he raised his head and his goitre swayed comically.

“You mentioned that spells were used. Which ones?”

Reynevan began to quote them, trying his best to remember. It didn’t take long.

“I know The Arbatel,” Circulos interrupted, waving a careless hand, “although it’s crudely muddled up in your recitation. It’s a wonder it worked at all… And there were no tragic deaths? Never mind. Were there visions? A many-headed lion? A rider on a pale horse? A raven? A fiery serpent? No? Interesting. And you say that when Samson awoke… He wasn’t himself, yes?”

“So he claimed. And there were certain… grounds for believing him. This is precisely what I’d like to find out—whether anything like that is even possible.”

Circulos said nothing for some time, rubbing one heel against the other. Then he cleared his nose.

“Space,” he said finally, pensively wiping a finger on his lap, “is a perfectly organised whole and a splendid hierarchical order. It is an equilibrium between generatio and corruptio, birth and dying, creation and destruction. Space is, as Augustine teaches, gradatio entium, a ladder of existences, the visible and the invisible, the material and the immaterial. Space is also like a book—”

“I asked if it’s possible.”

“Existence is not just substantia, existence is at the same time accidens, something that occurs unintentionally… occasionally magically—”

“Is it possible or not?” interrupted Reynevan bluntly.

“Possible indeed.” The old man nodded and pouted his blue lips. “Certainly, it is. In the given case, one must remember that any spell—even the most apparently trivial—requires a pact with a demon.”

“So it was a demon?”

“Or a cacodaemon.” Circulos shrugged his thin shoulders. “Or something we give that name to symbolically. What precisely?